


I've Come Home (You Were Never Supposed To Leave)

by FeathersMcStrange



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Brother-Sister Relationships, Episode: s01e01 Pilot, Gen, No Romance, No Sex, No Spoilers, One Shot, Sibling Bonding, Traditions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-02
Updated: 2015-02-02
Packaged: 2018-03-10 05:58:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3279323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FeathersMcStrange/pseuds/FeathersMcStrange
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Oliver Queen was gone for five years. And now it's his first night home, and he finds things with his sister are not as easy as they used to be. But Thea is still his sister, so as hard as it's going to be, he's still going to try.</p>
<p>or: Oliver can't sleep, Thea can't either, Mythbusters is a handy way to bridge any gap, and people change, but sometimes parts of them stay the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I've Come Home (You Were Never Supposed To Leave)

**Author's Note:**

> Set Oliver's first night home from the island, after he wakes up from the night-terror and kind of attacks Moira by accident. No real plot to speak of, nor is there any romance of any kind. Just a oneshot of the Queen sibs being sibs and trying to figure each other out again. Also Mythbusters. Because reasons.

> _Ships are launching from my chest_   
> _Some have names but most do not_   
> _If you find one, please let me know what piece I've lost_   
>   
> _Peel the scars from off my back_   
> _I don't need them anymore_   
> _You can throw them out or keep them in your mason jars_   
> _I've come home_
> 
> \- Radical Face, 'Welcome Home, Son'

After he wakes suddenly and nearly kills his mother by accident, Oliver figures sleep just isn't in the cards for him, his first night home in five years. So once he's changed into dry sweatpants and a new t-shirt, he lays on the bed he doesn't remember being this painfully soft, on top of the covers, and stares at the shifting patterns on the ceiling, the moonlight shadowed trees dancing in the storm still raging outside. _Welcome home_ , he thinks to himself sarcastically. _Have a giant rainstorm_.

It's someone approaching down the hall that draws his attention, the nearly silent sound of socked footsteps on carpet. Oliver lays on his back, every muscle tensed in anticipation, watching his door through the murky darkness of the room. It opens slowly, hinges creaking slightly thanks to years of minimal use. The silhouette in his doorway is slight and short, with long wavy hair. There's only one person who could fit that description in this house, and the tension gripping Oliver so tightly relaxes and uncoils, his body relaxing against the duvet cover.

Thea seems to deflate when she sees him laying there. Her right hand comes up sharply to grip at the doorframe and she sags against it, forehead pressing into the corner of the wood, left hand clenched into a fist at her side. Noticing her shoulders rising and falling in slow, controlled heaves, Oliver sits up. Now she knows he's awake for sure, and seems to be cringing backwards, unsure if she wants to beat a hasty retreat back out into the hall, or enter fully into the room.

“Thea?” Oliver calls out softly, and his sister makes her choice, stepping inside.

“Hi,” she says in a voice that is uncharacteristically awkward. Stiff. It's like she's forgotten how to interact with him.

(Oliver thinks that that's probably fair. He doesn't know how to interact with her anymore either. Not when the last time he saw her, she was a twelve year old who hung off his every word, and now it's five years later and she's seventeen and there's something shattered in her eyes and his chest, and nothing's the way it should be, the way it was.)

“Can't sleep?” he asks when the silence gets too heavy to carry for another moment. Her shoulders jerk up and down in a swift, deep sigh, and she seems to make a follow up decision to the one that carried her into the room, walking over and flopping down on the bed next to him. Oliver shifts over to give her room, laying back down, and for a while they stare at the shadows on the ceiling together, each listening to the once-familiar pattern of the way the other breathes.

“Yeah,” murmurs Thea after a while, hushed and brittle. Now it's Oliver's turn to sigh, feeling scar tissue pull with the expansion of his chest. “Storm's kinda loud.”

“Yeah, it is.”

It was louder on the island. What's keeping Oliver up now is the silence. But he isn't going to say that. Instead he agrees and tries to control the burning in the back of his eyes, the tight feeling in his throat at how old Thea sounds, how grown up she is now.

The silence seems to swell and grow, until it hits a crescendo and Thea jumps up, suddenly standing, with Oliver peering up at her in concern and confusion.

“This is ridiculous,” she announces. Determination creases her face and for a second she looks like the little girl Oliver said goodbye to one morning five years ago, promising he would be home soon. “Wait there.” Oliver doesn't have time to ask her where it is she thinks he's going to go before she's out of the room and the sound of footsteps is receding down the hall. It's quiet for less than a minute before the footsteps kick up again, this time approaching.

Thea re-enters Oliver's room triumphantly brandishing a laptop computer that is thinner than any laptop Oliver has ever seen in his life thus far. She hops back up next to him, sitting cross legged and leaning against the headboard while firing up the computer. With one eyebrow raised high, her brother props himself up on his elbows and peers at the screen dubiously.

“Uh, what are you doing?”

“Netflix, Ollie,” Thea says, tossing him a grin, then turning back and scrolling through a series of titles too fast for him to read any of them. He sits up to get a better look. She finally settles on something and the screen goes black, a red spinning circle with a percentage in the middle of it informing them that whatever Thea has chosen is twenty percent loaded. “You missed five seasons of Mythbusters, and if you ask me that's honestly just sad.”

In an instant Oliver is twenty two years old and it's a Friday night, but mom and dad are busy, so he's home watching Thea instead of going out like he normally would. Tommy would usually be there too, but something's come up, so it's just Oliver and Thea. They are camped out on the couch with more popcorn than they can reasonably consume, and more chocolate than they probably should. The Mythbusters home screen is on the tv, and as soon as they are both settled, the episode starts up.

The theme music sounds, Oliver blinks, and he's twenty seven again, his sister is a teenager, and they're in his room while a storm rages outside, trying to find their footing with each other after half a decade apart. Thea pulls a pillow from behind her, jams it against Oliver's upper arm, and makes herself right at home, using him to prop herself up and give her an optimal view as the title card flickers to life on the computer screen. He's frozen for a moment, unsure how to respond. But as the episode starts, he finds himself leaning back heavy into the headboard, settling into a more comfortable position. Thea is warm and heavy against his arm, and he finds that this might be what he missed the most, out of everything he'd left behind.

Just being near someone he cares about.

You never know how much you can miss it, really, until it's taken away from you, all the little things you always took for granted.

How tight your best friend's arms are around your back when he hugs you. Feeling your sister leaning against you when she uses you as furniture for the millionth time. The way your mother's perfume smells when she takes your elbow and walks close beside you.

So much was different about the island, and so much has changed since he disappeared, but the storm blows hard outside, the speakers of the computer produce the dull sound of a controlled explosion, Thea's laugh is half muffled by the pillow, and Oliver thinks that this... At least this much is always the same.

> _All my nightmares escape my head_   
> _Bar the door, please don't let them in_   
> _You were never supposed to leave_   
> _Now my head's splitting at the seams_   
> _And I don't know if I can_
> 
> \- Radical Face, 'Welcome Home, Son'


End file.
